Palestine and British COIN (catch all)

[Bill Moore]

I agree wholeheartedly. I only wish that more people would examine these conflicts from the point of view of the motives of the actors.

It gets even stickier when the motive of the leaders is revolution or resistance, and the motivations of the average fighter is personal self-esteem or revenge.

I think you would be hard pressed to make a case that we don't study these conflicts from the view point of the actors. What our liberal views tend to promote are that America is always wrong and inept, and we simply dismiss the nature of war which is a contest between two or more opponents where each attempts to "impose" their will upon the other. Furthermore, the result is never final, so the argument that we need to address underlying issues to get to a final solution can and is often overstated. We have objectives as a country that we have chose to use war to pursue, which means we recognize that our opponent's objectives are at odds with ours and we will have to use force to achieve them. It does not mean we don't understand their ends, in fact it is quite the opposite. If you disagree with why we went to war that is a different manner, but quite different from what you wrote.

This view of war is what has led to the myth that if we just give people jobs they'll quit fighting. PRTs became the main effort and the use of force to impose our will became a secondary manner. We created a condition where both approaches would fail. LTG McMasters is right that we have separated war from its nature, so understandably we seldom accomplish our objectives regardless of its duration and the amount of money we spend. I disagree with Bob that insurgency and COIN, and even CT are not war. They clearly are, but their character is very different than interstate war where the principle objective is to defeat that state's military forces, so we can impose our will upon them. War is inhumane and it shouldn't be our first choice to achieve our objectives. When we chose to use it as a tool, then we need use it correctly. While cruel, it is less cruel than dragging conflicts out forever with no end in sight. This multigenerational approach destroys societies.